Archive for July, 2008

Nancy Pelosi is bending over backwards to use any tactic and any trick to block any Republican energy proposal.

Why? Because Nancy Pelosi is a superhero. She’s out to save the planet. Maybe she calls herself “Supernanny” (I would offer “Superninny”).

A quote from a Politico interview provides one of the many bizarro world insights into her fractured psyche:

With fewer than 20 legislative days before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1, the entire appropriations process has largely ground to a halt because of the ham-handed fighting that followed Republican attempts to lift the moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration. And after promising fairness and open debate, Pelosi has resorted to hard-nosed parliamentary devices that effectively bar any chance for Republicans to offer policy alternatives.

“I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet,” she says impatiently when questioned. “I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy.”

“I respect the office that I hold,” she says. “And when you win the election, you win the majority, and what is the power of the speaker? To set the agenda, the power of recognition, and I am not giving the gavel away to anyone.”

Let’s face it, Washington: This speaker is different. She’s the first woman ever to hold the post and a very tough one at that, with a penchant for the mystical.

David Rogers is too kind: Speaker Pelosi has a penchant for the bizarre.

The thing that makes her posturing so ridiculously laughable is that she says she’s trying to save the planet by blocking domestic drilling. Doesn’t she realize that Saudi Arabia is part of the planet she claims to be trying to save?

"As record oil prices continue to burden American families and businesses,
reports indicate that the President's visit to Saudi Arabia today to push for
increased production has failed. Despite considerable influence, the Bush
Administration has been ineffective in pressuring Saudi Arabia and, yet again,
has failed to effectively use diplomacy to exact short-term relief for
American consumers."

This underscores the hypocrisy of this woman: she does everything she can to block domestic oil production in a move to save the planet, and practically at the same time she denounces the President for being unable to get another country to increase its oil production on the same planet she claims to be trying to save.

Consider the implicit statement of her preposterous position: “I as Speaker will do everything I can to prevent America from harnessing its own oil resources because I’m trying to save the planet; but I will simultaneously do everything I can to force another country to increase its production.”

How does Nancy Pelosi’s head not explode from all the contradictions?

Nancy Pelosi’s effort “to save the planet” is resulting in our dependency on foreign oil to the tune of $700 billion a year.

And Barack Obama is quoting Pelosi in his own megalomaniacal and self-aggradizing self-image:

“This is the moment, as Nancy [Pelosi] noted, that the world is waiting for… I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.”

This is unfolding like the beast of the Book of Revelation and his false prophet. It is scary and getting scarier.

There’s piece by Gerard Baker in the Times of London lampooning this image of Obama as Messiah. I have written about it as well. But it’s frankly not a laughing matter any more. The language that Obama is using concerning himself is frankly religious. We haven’t heard anything like this since der Fuhrer – who spoke at the same setting in Germany – and spoke to similar enthralled crowds. A man with this level of pseudo-self-identity is a man who can go down a disastrous path without hesitation. He becomes the man Justice Louis Brandeis envisioned when he said, “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

When millions of people become caught up in a zeal that is mindless because it is without any defining substance to follow a man because he is a symbol of something else, there is no limit to the depths of chaos we can descend into. Remember it was not “warmongers” who left the Western world shockingly unprepared for the holocausts of World War II; it was the self-righteous appeasing liberal mindset epitomized by Neville Chamberlain.

As usual, Barack Obama paints a beatific picture that is utterly devoid of details. Just what is it Obama thinks would represent “America returning to its best traditions”? And just why on earth is he its symbol? Perhaps it’s absolutely refusing to become energy independent while sending lawyers to another country to force it to supply the energy that we refuse to supply for ourselves? Obama is a man who is so entirely devoid of policy substance, and so self-assured of his infallibility, that he can routinely make completely contradictory statements without ever acknowledging any change at all.

WASHINGTON – The United States can defeat al-Qaida if it relies less on force and more on policing and intelligence to root out the terror group’s leaders, a new study contends.

“Keep in mind that terrorist groups are not eradicated overnight,” said the study by the federally funded Rand research center, an organization that counsels the Pentagon.

Its report said that the use of military force by the United States or other countries should be reserved for quelling large, well-armed and well-organized insurgencies, and that American officials should stop using the term “war on terror” and replace it with “counterterrorism.”

“Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests there is no battlefield solution to terrorism,” said Seth Jones, the lead author of the study and a Rand political scientist.

The story went on (blah blah blah) but the last paragraph pretty much told me the study it was reporting was a waste of time.

“Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors.” Too bad their “analysis did not suggest” that there is something called the fallacy of the false dilemma, and that the “lead author” dived right into it head first.

Seriously, when was the last time President Bush, one of our commanders, or any conservative anywhere EVER refer to terrorists as “holy warriors.” When was the last time anyone outside of terrorists referred to them as “holy warriors”?

How about terms such as “Islamic fascists,” “vicious murderers,” “nihilist monsters,” etcetera? Could you refer to them by any of those terms instead?

When you begin with that kind of fallacious presupposition by the lead author, you pretty much can tell you have a study that isn’t even worth lining your bird cage with.

Later in the article Seth Jones acknowledges, “We are not saying the military should not play a role. But unless you are talking about large insurgencies, military force should not be the tip of the spear.”

But al Qaeda most certainly qualifies as a “large insurgency.” It is both large, and it possesses a truly global reach. So Jones isn’t really saying squat.

That doesn’t stop the Associated Press from titling its story, “Study questions US strategy against al-Qaida,” as though somehow we’re supposed to re-examine our entire policy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Apparently there IS a battlefield solution to terrorism, after all. Based on its success, the finest military that ever existed makes for a pretty good spear tip.

And just so you know, Iraq was “the war that seemed lost” for Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Harry “the war is lost” Reid and Barack “the surge will surely fail” Obama. And of course for their “Nothing but Negative News All the Time” counterparts in the media. It didn’t seem lost to President Bush and to our absolutely magnificent military. The greatest tragedy is that we could have won the war a lot sooner – and with a lot fewer lives lost – had despicable Democrats supported it like they should have instead of using it as a political wedge issue.

Our recent successes prove that we shouldn’t be questioning our terror strategy; rather, we should be questioning the moral cowards who spent so much time and energy dividing this country with one pathetic question after another.

Barack Obama can fix everything just by taxing the rich. He can massively increase social spending simply by taxing the bejeebers of the evil and greedy rich. You CAN eat your cake and have it too!!!

There’s only one thing wrong (apart from the whole Marxist class warfare thing) with his plan:

Obama foolishly believes that raising taxes on the rich will be a panacea so that he can engage in all kinds of massive social programs (to the tune of $874 billion in new spending). He plans to raise $100 billion by increasing taxes on the rich. What he doesn’t understand is that the rich will change their behavior, begin sheltering their money, and suddenly government will see its stockpile of golden eggs shrink, and keep shrinking. Obama is counting on the rich acting exactly as they have been acting as a result of the Bush tax cuts. But he simply doesn’t understand that that isn’t the way real life actually works.

In today’s paper there was an Associated Press article discussing the federal budget deficit that contained the following statement on taxes vis-à-vis revenues.

McCain promises to renew the full roster of Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 and add many more for businesses and upper income people who pay the alternative minimum tax. The Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2010 and renewing them would soon cost well over $200 billion a year. Eliminating the alternative minimum at the same time would cost almost as much.

The sentence “The Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2010 and renewing them would soon cost well over $200 billion a year” is completely true – if human beings are simply robot idiots. It’s completely false if people react to changing environmental conditions by changing their behavior. The thing is that people AREN’T robot idiots and they DO change their behavior to avoid negatives and take advantage of positives.

Think of the recent high gas prices. Americans have overwhelmingly altered their behavior as a result of the high gas prices, driving nearly 10 billion fewer miles compared to last year. As the price of gas became more and more expensive, Americans reacted by altering their behavior. And if the price of gas goes back down, people will respond by increasing their driving.

And the rich do the same thing. They react to high taxes by sheltering their money, and they react to lower taxes by increasing their investments and growing their business.

The easiest example of this is the luxury tax that Democrats stupidly applied to items like yachts some years back. They saw only the additional revenue they would obtain by “soaking the rich,” but the rich – faced with a 10% additional tax – simply stopped buying yachts and the result nearly destroyed the boating industry. You don’t get rich by being stupid with money. But Democrats think entirely in class-warfare terms, and are simply incapable of learning this lesson.

What liberals – both in politics and in the media – do is look at the tax revenues, put in the higher tax rates they prefer, and calculate that they would make X.XX% more if the tax rate were higher. But that’s simply false, and it has been factually and historically proven false.

The Bush tax cuts produced higher than projected revenue – to the tune of a 35% growth between 2003 and 2006. In comparison, during the height of the Clinton economy between 1997 and 2000 – when he didn’t have 9/11 (and the subsequent hit to the economy) and we didn’t have wars in Afghanistan and Iraq dragging us down, federal receipts still rose only 28.2%.

The big surprise has been in tax revenue, which is running nearly 15 percent higher than in 2004. Corporate tax revenue has soared about 40 percent, after languishing for four years, and individual tax revenue is up as well.

Most of the increase in individual tax receipts appears to have come from higher stock market gains and the business income of relatively wealthy taxpayers. The biggest jump was not from taxes withheld from salaries but from quarterly payments on investment gains and business earnings, which were up 20 percent this year.

A Treasury Department analysis found that the tax cuts prompted the creation of jobs and increased the gross domestic product. It points out that:

Lower tax rates enable workers to keep more of their earnings, which increases work effort and labor force participation. The lower tax rates also enable innovative and risk-taking entrepreneurs to keep more of what they earn, which further encourages their entrepreneurial activity. The lower tax rates on dividends and capital gains lower the cost of equity capital and reduce the tax biases against dividend payment, equity finance, and investment in the corporate sector. All of these policies increase incentives to work, save, and invest by reducing the distorting effects of taxes. Capital investment and labor productivity will thus be higher, which means higher output and living standards in the long run.

Prior to the Reagan Revolution in 1981, the top marginal federal income tax rate was 70% (it is currently 35% under President Bush). At the 70% rate, the top 1% paid only 19% of the federal income tax burden, and the top 5% paid 37%. With the tax rate cut in half, the top 1% are paying more than twice as much of the total tax burden – nearly 40% – and the top 5% are paying nearly 60%.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday as his Democrats failed to move their energy bill:

They’ve come up with the most unbelievable dodge that I can remember. They said, ‘We’re not going to do anything on speculation because it’s no longer important,’ even though it’s part of their bill.

But that’s a bald faced lie, and he knows it.

Republicans have repeatedly said they were willing to deal on speculation, and alternative energy, and other things the Democrats want. But they insist that drilling on federal lands – which is now off limits on and off shore because of Democrats – be part of any package they will support. As usual, Democrats prove themselves to be dishonest manipulators rather than straight dealers.

You want another example of Democrats’ bald faced lies – again from the top Democrat in the Senate? Speaking again about speculation (i.e. the oil futures market), Reid said:

Something that will lower prices by 20-50%. And I think that, uh, one of the reasons the price of oil has gone down… you’ll note that it has gone down since we started, introduced, since we introduced our legislation dealing with speculation.

Within two days of Bush’s signing the executive order, the price of oil dropped from nearly $145 a barrel to $130.73 a barrel. And within four days, it had dropped to $128.88. And Harry Reid wants to take credit for this drop in price with his incredibly airheaded speculation bill that never really had a chance of overcoming a filibuster to begin with?

In the House, Democrats are putting the energy bill on the “suspension calender” in a move that will require a 2/3 majority to pass any legislation, but which prevents the Republicans from adding ANY amendments to allow for drilling on federal lands or contribute in any way.

Democrats are so paranoid that a drilling amendment might be introduced that they would rather scuttle any meaningful vote whatsoever.

Why did President Bush lift the ban?:

The White House announced today that President Bush will lift an executive order banning offshore oil drilling, a move aimed at stepping up pressure on Congress to end the prohibition it imposed in 1981.

The futures market reduced the price of oil because they saw the very real possibility that the American political system might finally get itself in gear to increase the supply of oil. Increased supplies lower prices. It’s as simple as that.

It is just like the Democrat Party to do everything possible to cause the problem for restricting the oil supply, and then try to claim credit for lowering prices. They are the worst kind of backstabbing liars you could possibly ever deal with.

To add to the sheer insanity of the Democrat’s position on energy, Sen. Charles Schumer said the same day:

The bottom line is very simple. We Democrats believe in the future when it comes to energy policy. We believe in alternative energy, we believe we have to wean ourselves away from oil and dependency from people like Ahmadinejad, Chavez and Putin. And they want to throw themselves right into their owns because big oil wants it. So the equations is simple. The Republicans equal big oil and the past. They do what big oil wants. We democrats represent alternatives weaning ourselves away from oil and the future.

So Democrats state that they have no intention of doing anything to increase the supply of oil or doing anything meaningful to reduce the cost even as they blame the Republicans who ARE trying to increase the oil supply.

Or to put it another way, how on earth can Democrats be both for oil and against oil at the same time?

And pandering demagogue that Schumer is, he labels Republicans as stooges of the oil companies which he and other Democrats have repeatedly demonized.

Oil companies certainly have their flaws. But they have one essential virtue: they produce oil. And in demonizing oil companies, Democrats have long-since crossed the line into demonizing the oil that these companies produce.

Democrats like Schumer and Reid are not just part of the problem – they ARE THE PROBLEM. Because of Democrats, we are doing nothing to tap our own massive energy resources. Because of Democrats, we are therefore forced to go to the very dictators that Schumer named and give them $700 billion a year for something we could be producing ourselves.

We can either go on listening to one stupid self-serving lie and excuse after another, or we can vote these fools out and elect men and women who will allow this country to provide itself with the energy we need.

TOP PRIORITIES:
My top priority as president will be ending this war in Iraq, a war that should have never been authorized and never been waged. In doing so, I will work to keep our country safe from terrorists and to restore American credibility around the world. Providing universal health care to the 47 million Americans who currently do not have it will be another top priority of my administration, as will combating global warming and putting our country on the path toward energy independence.

47 million “Americans”…? It turns out that…

… many Democrats have used “Americans” to mean various things, from U.S. citizens to U.S. citizens plus immigrants to U.S. citizens plus immigrants and illegal aliens to everyone in North and South America. In the mind of many Democratic Party leaders, the word “American” is a bit fluid.Further, the numbers don’t add up: The 45 to 47 million people that BHO touts as covered by his plan include millions of people who aren’t U.S. citizens.

For instance, BHO’s page (barackobama.com/issues/healthcare) includes this quote from his May 29, 2007 Iowa City, IA speech:

If you are one of the 45 million Americans who don’t have health insurance, you will have it after this plan becomes law.

In the text of the page, it says this:

47 million Americans — including nearly 9 million children — lack health insurance with no signs of this trend slowing down.

Now, let’s turn to the Census Bureau chart in this PDF file (link). On Page 21, the number of those without health insurance in 2006 is indeed 47 million (rounded up). However, only 35.7 million of those are native born or naturalized.

10.2 million of the 47 million are listed as “not a citizen”. The Census Bureau doesn’t say what status those 10.2 million have, but some will be visitors, some will be those working towards citizenship, and some will be illegal aliens. Most likely a good percentage or a majority will in fact be illegal aliens.

The Obama campaign released a new ad Feb. 14 in Wisconsin called “Debate,” quoting Bill Clinton’s first secretary of labor, Robert Reich, as saying Obama’s plan covers “more people” than Clinton’s. We find the ad misleading and, in one respect, false.

And Barack Obama’s claim that he won’t cover illegal immigrants is also misleading and false.

Barack Obama and the Democrats claim that the government can use economy of scale to reduce health care prices if the government gets involved. This claim makes sense in theory, but in actual practice is laughably false 100% of the time. The simple reality is that government is inherently inefficient, incompetent, wasteful, and corrupted by special interests and greedy self-interests.

Take something that just occurred as an object lesson. An article titled, “High Medicare Costs, Courtesy of Congress,” describes how Congress discarded a measure that would have required Medicare suppliers to submit bids in favor of a bill that will keep artificially high costs and profits a mainstay of the Medicare system. So Medicare will keep spending $110 on a walker that WalMart sells for $60, as one example. That’s just the kind of “commonsense plan” that Democrats will give you when they’re in charge of things.

It’s not out of cruelty that conservatives oppose big government health care; it’s because government is inherently wasteful (everyone else has to live under a budget or go broke, you know?), and because its simply stupid, risky, and just plain wrong to put a quarter of the American economy under direct government control.

When you add 47 million people to the health care system, you will invariably end up with the rationing of care, just as they have so much of in Europe. And as the government gets more and more of its hands in the health care pie, you can guarantee that both costs and mismanagement will increase more and more.

And when you provide medical coverage to illegal immigrants – as Barack Obama’s plan clearly provides in spite of his disingenuous comments to the contrary – you will continue to encourage millions and millions of uneducated “undocumented” immigrants to continue to flood into this country and further swamp our social services budgets.

There’s little “apparently” about it: The National Enquirer has run stories that John Edwards had a “love child” with a woman named Rielle Hunter. The story begins:

Vice Presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards was caught visiting his mistress and secret love child at 2:40 this morning in a Los Angeles hotel by the NATIONAL ENQUIRER.

The married ex-senator from North Carolina – whose wife Elizabeth continues to battle cancer — met with his mistress, blonde divorcée Rielle Hunter, at the Beverly Hilton on Monday night, July 21 – and the NATIONAL ENQUIRER was there! He didn’t leave until early the next morning.

Rielle had driven to Los Angeles from Santa Barbara with a male friend for the rendezvous with Edwards. The former senator attended a press event Monday afternoon with L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on the topic of how to combat homelessness.

But a months-long NATIONAL ENQUIRER investigation had yielded information that Rielle and Edwards, 54, had arranged to secretly meet afterward and for the ex-senator to spend some time with both his mistress and the love child who he refuses to publicly acknowledge as his own.

John Edwards was in Los Angeles to do one of his poverty events, and the Enquirer discovered that Rielle Hunter had a room at the Beverly Hilton. Believing that John Edwards – whom their sources claimed was the father of Hunter’s child in December 2007 story – would show up, an Enquirer team obtained a room and laid in wait for the former Senator.

Sure enough he showed up. And when the Enquirer reporters began to photograph him and ask him questions at 2:40 A.M., Edwards – who did not have a room at the hotel he was in at nearly 3 A.M. – ran into a bathroom and called security.

So let’s just come out and acknowledge the plain fact: John Edwards is a philandering lech who had a long-time sexual affair even as his wife is possibly dying of cancer.

Okay. For many who have long-since come to believe that John Edwards was a scumbag par excellance, this isn’t so much news as it is confirmation of what they already thought.

LAT Gags Blogs: In a move that has apparently stirred up some internal discontent, the Los Angeles Times has banned its bloggers, including political bloggers, from mentioning the Edwards/Rielle Hunter story. Even bloggers who want to mention the story in order to make a skeptical we-don’t-trust-the-Enquirer point are forbidden from doing so. Kausfiles has obtained a copy of the email Times bloggers received from editor Tony Pierce. [I’ve excised the recipient list and omitted Pierce’s email address]:

From: “Pierce, Tony”

Date:July 24, 2008 10:54:41 AM PDT

To: [XXX]

Subject: john edwards

Hey bloggers,

There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair. Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations. So I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified.

If you have any questions or are ever in need of story ideas that would best fit your blog, please don’t hesitate to ask

Keep rockin,

Tony

That will certainly calm paranoia about the Mainstream Media (MSM) suppressing the Edwards scandal. …

P.S.: Is the Times’ edict a) part of a double-standard that favors Democrats (and disfavors Republicans like Rep. Vito Fossella and John McCain)? Or does it b) simply reflect an outmoded Gatekeeper Model of journalism in which not informing readers of certain sensitive allegations is as important as informing them–as if readers are too simple-minded to weigh charges that are not proven, as if they aren’t going to find out about such controversies anyway? I’d say it’s a mixture of both (a) and (b). This was a sensational scandal the LAT and other MSM papers passionately did not want to uncover when Edwards was a formal candidate, and now that the Enquirer seems to have done the job for them it looks like they want everyone to shut up while they fail to uncover it again. …

There are so many reasons to know that the media is WAY, WAY, WAAAAAYYY in the tank for Democrats.

You can add that to the massive media entourage – including all three elite network anchors – that accompanied Barack Obama on his foreign trip.

You remember the “wide-stance” airport bathroom arrest of Republican Senator Larry Craig? The media were all over that story after it surfaced, and had been trying to get dirt on him for months. Though he ultimately refused to resign, the constant media attention destroyed his career, and he is not running for re-election.

You remember the media frenzy over the Repulbican Representative Mark Foley scandal in Florida? It may have been the straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back moment for Republicans in the 2006 elections. The media couldn’t get enough of that one. And as much as they covered the scandal, they misrepresented it to make it sound worse than it actually was. One had to work to learn the truth that the media didn’t reveal: that Foley was not molesting boys, but rather forming friendships with congressional pages, and then contacting them with sexual advances AFTER they were of legal age. He did not solicit sex with any active page. He has never been arrested for his conduct since his resignation.

Neither of these men had anywhere NEAR the public profile of two-time Democratic candidate for president and 2004 vice-presidential candidate Edwards. But it didn’t matter to a media that was out to destroy Republicans and influence elections. The media ignored the Edwards “love-child” story for months and months when they went after Republicans with zeal.

Now, I don’t mind one bit that the media exposed guys like Craig and Foley. What they did – legal or not – was wrong, and they should have been exposed.

What bothers me is the constant double-standard of a media that represents itself as being objective while it is clearly in the tank for liberals and Democrats.

On story after story, issue after issue, the media reveals its bias. It reveals it in the stories it covers, the stories that it refuses to cover, the people it interviews or refuses to interview for a given story, and the angle or topic of a story that is covered versus other possible angles. They do it all the time, unrelentingly.

Many liberals believe as they do because they have been made stupid by a media that routinely distorts the truth and misrepresents the facts. They cannot understand reality because they are constantly presented with a lie.

As much of a story as two-time Democrat candidate for president John Edward’s infidelity is, the real story is the bias of the media in refusing to fairly and objectively cover a story that would negatively effect Democrats.

Obama Camp: Visit to Troops Would Have Seemed Too Political
by FOXNews.com
Friday, July 25, 2008

U.S. troops at military facilities in Germany, but it would have been awkward.

That was the suggestion from both the Obama campaign and the military Friday, after the Illinois senator drew criticism from Republicans for canceling his scheduled visits while in Europe.

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said Friday the campaign was initially given clearance to land at Ramstein Air Base, but were told by the Pentagon Wednesday that the trip “would be viewed as a campaign stop.”

Obama also had plans to visit the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. Gibbs said on the flight from Tel Aviv to Germany, Obama made the call not to go.

“Senator Obama made the decision that we were not going to have wounded men and women become involved in a campaign event or what would be perceived as a campaign event,” Gibbs said.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told FOX News the Pentagon did not tell Obama he couldn’t visit, but explained that he would be under specific restrictions.

“We do have certain policy guidelines for political campaigns and elections and what is appropriate and what is not appropriate in those situations,” he said. “The issue here is that if you are both a sitting senator and a political candidate … you need to do it in your capacity as a sitting senator or you have to do it with the restrictions that apply to any other candidate out there that might be running for office that is not a sitting senator.”

A memo sent out Wednesday from Undersecretary of Defense David Chu explained that Obama’s visit to such a military facility would be limited under these circumstances. Obama would not have been able to bring any of his campaign staff — only one Senate staffer and security. He also would not have been able to address the media or make any campaign-related statements.

The Obama campaign said Thursday it would be “inappropriate” to make such a stop on the campaign-funded leg of his trip, after the German magazine Der Spiegel reported on the cancellations.

John McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said, “Barack Obama is wrong. It is never inappropriate to visit our men and women in the military.”

McCain’s Senate colleague Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., also took a shot at Obama.

“I noticed that Obama had plenty of time to shoot hoops … but he didn’t have the time to stop by (the Ramstein base),” he told FOX News.

FOX News’ Justin Fishel and Bonney Kapp contributed to this report.

The visit was planned until Obama found out he wouldn’t be able to bring his media entourage with him. Rather, as a Senator, he would only be able to bring a single staff member.

The Pentagon provided Obama some special leeway given the unusual nature of Obama’s visit. They arranged to allow his campaign plane to land in the airfield, and they arranged to allow a military photographer to accompany Obama and take pictures if the soldiers agreed.

But Obama decided that if his media entourage couldn’t come, the trip wasn’t worth making.

And then – when criticized – he demonstrated that at his center he is a blame-the-military-style liberal. He misrepresented the Pentagon’s message in a self-serving and accusatory way that the Pentagon – which bent over backwards for Obama – didn’t deserve.

Obama should have quietly visited the troops with his single staffer, and been on his way. The notion that he would have been criticized for doing so is patently false. Also, there are simply things that are presumably WORTH taking criticism for – and visiting wounded heroes is one of them. If Obama truly valued these men and women and their service, he would have done what was right, and that’s that.

Apparently, Obama only “cares” when there are cameras around to record his display of compassion.

I have come to believe that one of the greatest crises that mankind faces today is due to anthropogenic global stupidity.

Runaway global warming alarmism has pushed pseudo-science superheated emissions to dangerous levels much faster than previously estimated and, instead of reaching the threshold within a decade, it was actually crossed two years ago. Anthropogenic global stupidity may have pushed earth past the tipping point, according to one study.

I’m ridiculing these idiots, obviously. But you have to laugh at such paranoid nonsense.

Al Gore, the “patron saint” of global warming alarmism is more of a “patent stooge.”

Al Bore showed up on NBC’s Meet the Press on July 20, 2008 and had this to say:

VICE PRES. GORE: Well, I, I mean, I think there’s a consensus now that it’s happening even more rapidly than the scientists were telling us years ago. We’re seeing record high temperatures. Nine of the 10 hottest years ever recorded have, have been in the last couple of decades. We’re seeing the stronger storms. We’re seeing the damage that, that people–and our national security experts–the military intelligence, the Pentagon, the National Intelligence Defense Council–they have warned us about the national security threats from potentially hundreds of millions of climate refugees caused by the climate crisis. This is really–just this, this past week, the EPA said the American way of life is threatened.

MR. BROKAW: Chuck Todd, David Gregory, welcome to both of you. Let’s begin with Al Gore.

He’s tan, rested, but apparently not ready to go back into government, Chuck. Let me just offer a proposition. No one is better informed on this issue of energy conservation and global climate change than he is, no one is more passionate about it. But this issue breaks along party lines as you go across the country. Do you think it is, in part, because in the eyes of Republicans and those on the right, he is still very much a radioactive political figure, and he would be better off if he appeared on stage

Well, under the theory that “No one is better informed on this issue of energy conservation and global climate change than Al Gore is,” you’d at least expect him to get his pertinent facts somewhat correct.

But nope. Al spouts off debunked idiocy the way Jesus spouted off universal wisdom. His claim that “We’re seeing record high temperatures. Nine of the 10 hottest years ever recorded have, have been in the last couple of decades”? Just plain NOT.

NASA was forced to revise its rankings for the hottest years on record after a blogger – A BLOGGER – discovered serious mathematical errors in the process that the agency so advanced it sends rockets to Mars had relied upon to advance the global warming myth.

The new figures are available at this official NASA/GISS site. The higher the positive annual mean figure, the warmer the year was.

Five of the top ten occur prior to 1940, before mainstream scientists believe humans had any discernible impact on temperatures, and six of the top ten hottest years occurred before 90 percent of the growth in greenhouse gas emissions during the last century occurred.

That doesn’t sound nearly as good as “Nine of the 10 hottest years on record,” though. Al Gore is a firm believer in the old pseudo-scientific adage, “If the facts get in the way of my theory, so much the worse for the facts.”

That didn’t stop Gore from garnering a Nobel Prize. Apparently, Joseph Goebbels-like propaganda tactics are now perfectly acceptable in today’s postmodern version of “science.” If your ideology is suitably politically correct, it no longer matters if all your “facts” are actually wrong. It is downright scary.

And he’s making scientifically indefensible and, yes, alarmist and exaggerated claims regarding storms as well. It is the number of people living along coastal areas, rather than global warming, that is the most worrisome trend taking place.

And to debunk the last claim in his quote, describing “hundreds of millions of climate refugees caused by the climate crisis,” realize that one of the nine documented “alarmist and exaggerated” claims referred to an Al Gore claim that “low lying Pacific atolls have already been evacuated.” It’s simply false. The man doesn’t need facts when hysterical claims suit his agenda better.

The discovery of a tropical heat vent that computer climate models do not take into account could reduce the threat of global warming to meaninglessness. The journal Science published a seventeen year study of Greenland’s ice sheet that flatly contradicts the hysterical reports and bogus claims from nutjobs like Al Bore. And World Climate Report has an article titled “Antarctic Ice: A Global Warming Snow Job?” that similarly shows the bogus hyper-alarmism surrounding that region. Another study just released shows that Greenland’s ice – in contradiction to alarmist theories – has easily survived previous global warmings and very likely will survive many more.

I’ve written previous articles detailing some of the vast research that has proven that “global warming” is NOT caused by man, but rather is a cyclical natural phenomena occurring roughly every 1,500 years. And I’ve written about the problem of ideology taking the place of genuine science, and the fact that scientists are literally being persecuted for debunking outright academic fraud and self-serving scientific errors.

“Global warming” is very likely not a serious problem for mankind (believe me, it’s a LOT better than an ice age!), but the real and growing threat of “global stupidity” looms larger than ever. And there seems to be no answer to this crisis.

Correspondent Major Garrett filed this report for Fox News Special Report that appeared Thursday, July 25, on Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin, Germany:

MAJOR GARRETT: The scene, unprecedented in contemporary European politics, was unlike any a U.S. presidential nominee ever had the audacity to expect, or the cultural candlepower to attract. But to the upbeat throngs estimated by Berlin police to be in excess of 200,000 Obama did not sing a sweet song of hope and change. Instead he zeroed in on the threats of terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

OBAMA SPEECH VIDEO: “This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets. No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Afghanistan. But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO’s first mission beyond Europe’s borders is a success. For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done. America cannot do this alone. The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now.”

MAJOR GARRETT: That means Germany and other NATO nations must throw more into the battlefield in Afghanistan, where a resurgent Taliban and its terror-plotting al Qaeda allies have recently launched increasingly lethal attacks.”

As for Iran and its headlong pursuit of nuclear weaponry, Obama said While Europe may welcome his call for direct unconditional talks, europe must back such an initiative with a heretofore missing committment to using all economic and diplomatic tools to isolate and punish Iran if it proves intractable.

OBAMA SPEECH VIDEO: “This is the moment we must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East. My country must stand with yours and with Europe in sending a direct message to Iran that it must abandon its nuclear ambitions. We must support the Lebanese who have marched and bled for democracy, and the Israelis and Palestinians who seek a secure and lasting peace. And despite past differences, this is the moment when the world should support the millions of Iraqis who seek to rebuild their lives, even as we pass responsibility to the Iraqi government and finally bring this war to a close.”

“A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more — not less.”

MAJOR GARRETT: On a continent weary of Pres. Bush Obama spoke of a new era, but hastened to add, if he’s elected, his administration will not represent a cost-free alternative to the status-quo.

The crowd, which did not applaud that much, filed quietly away. If Obama hoped his words would galvanize the audience and his message would thereby reverberate in capitals throughout Europe, there was no evidence of it. The tepid response may stand as a silent declaration that calls for new sacrifice and anti-terror tenacity – whether spoken by the current president or the presumptive Democratic nominee – meets similar European skepticism.

Garrett noted that Obama’s speech did garner some applause lines – on the issues of global warming, a call for “just peace” between Israel and the Palestinas, and especially on the call to end the war in Iraq.

But the real story was the absence of applause on Obama’s presentation of his foreign policy.

One of the biggest delusions Democrats suffer from is the perception that if only their guy were president, the world would love us. They believe that Europeans hate President Bush because he’s a cowboy who ignored them and decided to do it all on his own.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

We saw a little bit of the real problem in Berlin on Thursday: if Barack Obama wants to stand up to terrorists and demand Iran renounce its nuclear weaponry, he better expect that he will be acting alone.

Europeans are not willing to sacrifice. They don’twant to “renew their resolve to rout the terrorists.” They don’twant to have a stake in seeing the NATO mission in Afghanistan is a success. They don’t want to send troops to Afghanistan. They don’t want to send “a direct message to Iran that it must abandon its nuclear ambitions.” They don’t want to commit to “using all economic and diplomatic tools to isolate and punish Iran.” They don’t want to “be required to do more–not less.”

Now, personally, I don’t really believe that Barack Obama wants any of this either. I think he was simply pandering to American public opinion and mouthing the slogans that Americans want to hear from a man they rightly believe is weak on foreign policy.

But don’t expect squat from Europe if you want to stand up and act in order to secure a better and safer world.

The story presents the fact that European papers and television across the continent were presenting and believing the myth that Columbia bribed the terrorist organization FARC to release the hostages, and the rescue by the army was just a ruse. It provides details of how France, Denmark, Italy, Germany, and Spain have paid one ransom after another for hostages. And then it concludes:

European friends of the FARC are angry. How dare Colombia join the ranks of Britain, Israel, and the United States by refusing to negotiate with terrorists? How dare Colombia disprove the European mantra that all conflicts be resolved through diplomacy? How dare Colombia upstage post-heroic Europeans who, having lost the will to fight, believe anything can be bought for money?

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe summed it up well: “There are some who are bitter and who are seeking to discredit the operation. But these bitter people only know Colombia from afar. Aloof Europeans, what do they know about Colombian ingenuity? They believe that Colombian genius lies with the FARC. Someday they will know these military boys who carried out this operation.”

The fact of the matter is that Europe looks at diplomacy, negotiation, and compromise as end-all solutions. Look at what they have accomplished, they would argue: we formed our European Union on the basis of compromise. We who were former enemies united; why can’t we likewise come together with opponents such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran?

What they don’t realize is that the United States of America has a rather enormous advantage of experience in the process of “uniting,” having done so nearly two centuries before Europe got into the act; that Americans aren’t much interested in hearing moral lectures on politics from the inventors of monarchism, communism, fascism, Nazism, and socialism; that the only reason Europeans aren’t speaking first German and after that Russian is because the United States stood up and fought for their freedom; and that Europeans ought to be therefore grateful enough and generous enough to stand with the United States as we continue to fight for the freedom of other oppressed peoples.

What Europeans have conveniently forgotten is that their freedom was won for them, and not by them. What they have forgotten was that their diplomacy, negotiation, and compromise didn’t mean squat to the Nazis or the Soviets; only American power and our willingness to use it mattered to these determined enemies of human freedom.

If Barack Obama becomes president (and, I must admit, there’s a part of me – and I’m ashamed to admit this – that wants Obama to get elected so that everyone can see just how spectacularly liberalism will fail) he will be shocked to discover that Europe will be nothing but an obstacle to his every effort to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

The reason President Bush ultimately was forced to attack Iraq was because France and Russia did everything they could to prevent any meaningful sanctions being applied to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in a corrupted and incompetent United Nations. We had good reasons for believing that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD, and were frustrated at every turn by Europe in obtaining the tough sanctions that would have forced Saddam to open up his program to inspection. Unable to obtain a diplomatic solution, we were forced to either attack or risk a WMD-armed Iraq.

And Russia and China are doing the same thing now in protecting Iran even as it is almost certainly developing a nuclear weapons program.

We’re going to see the same demand to let diplomacy and sanctions work – even as every meaningful effort at diplomacy and sanctions is thwarted; we’re going to see the same aversion to war – even as war becomes the only option; we’re going to see the same international condemnation and isolation all over again.

Or we’re going to see a nuclear-armed Iran that will be free to carry out terrorist campaigns by proxy and even shut down the Strait of Hormuz at will with absolute impunity.

Europeans have largely degenerated into Nietzsche’s portrayal of the “Last Man,” the end result of decades of creeping cynicism and mediocrity.

Today, Europeans are frankly both pathetic and apathetic. They won’t stand up for anything; they won’t fight for anything. The people who are literally dying out due to extremely low birth rates don’t care if they are consuming benefits paid for by massive debt that will crush the next generations after them. And their most cherished desire is that the mighty United States would be as weak, as pathetic, and as insignificant as they are.

Americans would have a different view of the world – and a different view of President George Bush – if they learned that lesson. It may take the election of a liberal president, and the crisis of a nuclear Iran, to drive that reality home.

It seems not everyone in Germany was ecstatic about Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin.

German broadcasting station Deutsche Welle reports that those attending were told to leave their placards and posters at home.

The move came under criticism, especially from the German left, which speculated that the campaign wanted to avoid images of Germans displaying anti-American statements. Others say the ban was aimed at preventing activists from making demands on Obama.

And the senator’s visit will cost just over three-quarters of a million dollars — half of which will be paid for with German public funds.

Kiwi Bounty

It seems there will be no such hero’s welcome in New Zealand for Condoleezza Rice this weekend.

The New Zealand Press Association is reporting that Auckland University’s student association is offering a $5,000 reward to any student who can make a successful citizen’s arrest of the secretary of state.
Association president David Do says the arrest would be for Rice’s role in “overseeing the illegal invasion and continued occupation” of Iraq.

He adds, “It is hard enough living as a student in Auckland these days without having a war criminal coming to town, so we thought we’d give our students a chance to make a dent in their student loans and work for global justice at the same time.”

Not Reporting the Good News?

A sharp decline in the intensity of news coverage of the Iraq war immediately followed General David Petraeus’ testimony before Congress last September.

Cybercast News reports that data from the Multi-National Force-Iraq shows there were 219 embedded reporters in Iraq when Petraeus told Congress that the surge was working. That was also the month that the surge reached full force.

The number of embedded reporters has since dropped by 74 percent in nine months to just 58 in June.

The largest single-month drop in embeds came in October of 2007 right after the general’s testimony.

Not So Fair & Balanced

The Arab news network Al-Jazeera celebrated the birthday of released Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar with a cake and fireworks.

The Middle East Media Research Institute reports that Kuntar — who shot an Israeli child’s father in front of her and then beat her to death with his rifle in 1979 — was given a hero’s welcome on the network.

One interviewer said, “You deserve even more than this. I think that 11,000 prisoners — if they can see this program now — are celebrating your birthday with you. Happy birthday.”

Kuntar, who was part of that Israel-Hezbollah prisoner swap last week, was then presented with a cake and a collage of photos, including one of him and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. And as Kuntar cut into his cake the network set off fireworks.

— FOX News Channel’s Zachary Kenworthy contributed to this report.

So, by way of brie recap, we have a Germany protecting – and actually paying for – Barack Obama’s effort to campaign on foreign soil. We have New Zealanders and college pukes at Auckland University insulting the U.S. Secretary of State – and the America that sent her – with the same crazy antiwar garbage that our own equally anti-American liberals routinely vomit out. We’ve got more in-your-face PROOF that the media wanted our American war effort in Iraq to fail and now refuse to broadcast its success. And we see that Arab media network Al Jazeera has a lot in common with our media here: they both like the terrorists more than they like those who fight them.